I was just making the point that I don't stand to personally benefit from any change.

In Thailand you get bidet faucets and paper. West needs to catch up.

Virus-ready.

I posted about this earlier today quoting from an interview on NPR. The full story isn't out yet. But I'll dig it up later and/or post more when there's more conclusive evidence forthcoming.

:lol:

Yes, so to be consistent, you'd have to be yelling "lock him up" if Trump was guilty of the same. Now all we have to do is gather enough evidence that he is.

You're still doing it. Again, this tactic is not going to work on anyone here. I asked you a hypothetical then followed up with another. You've twice avoided the second hypothetical. Here it is again:

And if it was a Democrat preferring Americans died to risking an election loss, you would be... ? Just disappointed. Isn't it a little more serious than that? — Baden

If you want to suggest you're not a government propaganda artist, answer the question. If you are, continue playing games.

Nobody said anything about anyone "saying" anything. You don't come out and admit that, obviously. Plus, you didn't at all answer the question I put to you in the post you replied to. This is where the rabbit-level-IQ bait and switch comes in. It's transparent, annoying, and a typical tactic of government spin-doctors. And if you keep doing it, we'll continue to keep presuming you are one.

Sure.

I would be disappointed. — NOS4A2

And if it was a Democrat preferring Americans died to risking an election loss, you would be... ? Just disappointed. Isn't it a little more serious than that?

I don't live in the US, so I don't have to worry about it, personally. Excepting doctor's visits, I get my healthcare for free. Ergo, it's a theoretical argument for me. And you're not engaging.

You didn't answer the question. If it is true then what's your reaction?

OK, then if it's true that Trump delayed testing because he thought it would cause negative media coverage and damage to his chances to reelection. In other words, if it is true that he put his own political interests above public health interests, what would your reaction be? Here's your chance not to give the Whitehouse spin or avoid the question. Take it on. Answer it.

You keep saying "socialist", "socialist" without responding to anything I said and then you say you're done. Nothing I've said is "socialist" in the way you've implied. I repeat, it's conservative policy here too. We can talk about socialism another time.

I didn't claim every criticism was valid. But you respond to even valid criticisms with Whitehouse spin. Maybe inside the government propaganda shell that you've trapped yourself in there's a real person with his own opinions. Maybe.

@fishfry No-one is advocating Stalinism here. We're talking about the type of healthcare that even every conservative government in the Western world supports.

Maybe read and respond to what I wrote instead of repeating hysterical nonsense.

No, this thread and others contain valid criticisms of your government. And you are a government tool doing propaganda and nothing more. At least stop pretending you mistrust government etc. Nobody on this thread trusts and tries to get others to trust the Whitehouse more than you. You do it in an absurd Hannity-type way that only rabbit-level IQs would swallow, but you do it anyway.

You don't trust a government which you can vote for and change (i.e. you don't trust the public including yourself) but you trust corporations whose only motivation is profit. Really? Have you ever stopped and asked yourself cui bono? Who does this attitude and the ideology it represents benefit? It doesn't benefit the American public as a whole because your health care system is measurably one of the worst in the developed world and, as repeatedly pointed out, costs the public more in taxes than anywhere else in the developed world. It does benefit insurance companies massively because they make more money in America than anywhere. Try putting that all together. Maybe read some Gramsci on hegemony. You've been conned. This whole hysterical mistrust of government thing is manufactured by corporations afraid of the public using government as a tool to look after their own interests rather than theirs, i.e. of democracy. Seriously, just sit down and think.

All anyone has to do to know what I said is true is to read your posts. And servile tools of the government pretending to be in favour of liberty/individuality etc should be called out for their hypocrisy on every platform they pollute. So, stop whining and get back to telling us how wonderful this Whitehouse is.

I would say the US system a racket. — ssu

It's amazing how insurance companies and other vested interests have managed to convince tools like @fishfry that a system that costs twice as much as it should, is half as good as it should be, and makes them billions is in his and the public's interest. All the data in the world won't wake the guy up to reality. Pure ideological blindness.

I almost hate hoarders more than sycophants. Just how many shits can one dude take?

I try to think of the countless cases of “letting the government do what they’re supposed to do” and come up with little more than state-sanctioned oppression. — NOS4A2

Amusing that a servile sycophant of the head of government who is on this site almost exclusively to spread pro-Whitehouse propaganda is lecturing us about individual responsibility, liberty, and mistrust of government. You literally do almost nothing here but spin the government line and posts links favourable to Whitehouse positions. Maybe you're being deliberately ironic or something but you're an absurd parody of everything you pretend to believe in.

Yes, it took a stock market crash for the disgusting prick to do anything. :vomit:

Wonderful irony if he does. He'll get a personal taste of what a hoax virus feels like. And, no, Don, it's not just like the flu. News I just read suggests Ivanka may be infected too.

I thought it was for American registered voters only?

He even got "neurosurgeon" Ben Carson to go on TV and tell people it was OK to go to his rallies. Disgusting. And yet Americans will still vote for the guy who would rather watch them die than lose a few points in the polls.

Breaking that the reason covid testing wasn't done earlier was because Trump thought it would harm his reelection chances. A move that directly and predictably is resulting in more Americans dying of the disease. What a piece of shit he is.

" In the case of Alex Azar, he did go to the president in January. He did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the new coronavirus could be a major problem. There were aides around Trump - Kellyanne Conway had some skepticism at times that this was something that needed to be a presidential priority.

...My understanding is he did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear - the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall."

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814881355/white-house-knew-coronavirus-would-be-a-major-threat-but-response-fell-short

:eyes: :up:

@NOS4A2
Letting the government do the things they're supposed to do and we elect them to do doesn't inhibit freedom, it enhances it. And if a contrary ideology leads to the absurdity of preferring sickness and death to government intervention, dump it. And this goes not only for public health: Just about everything we have that prevents us from living in the woods and being devoured by bears, just about everything that has allowed the notions of "freedom" and "liberty" to flourish has been given to us by successive governments building on a social contract we all benefit from. In other words, the vast majority of what any of us has in modern developed nations, we owe. Your ego may not like that, but that's reality. That doesn't mean government always gets it right—we need to hold it accountable—but ranting about "liberty" every time said concept is invoked is a sign of a profound ignorance of history, civilization, and our social nature. It's a much more serious injury to liberty to be bound by a diseased ideology than to admit you need a little help from your friends up high to get by.

OK, so you're against doing the thing you just said you're for doing (stopping the parade) because tying yourself up in a pretzel of libertarian rhetoric is preferable to admitting you are not as crazy as you would like us to think you are.

In that case, you are for the bureaucrats stepping in in the case of a pandemic and doing things like controlling public gatherings. The exact thing you seemed to be arguing against earlier.

Yes, you'd have to do the whole thing over, so the workaround seems sensible.



I think they have less reason to feel bitter this time. Biden won because Dems want him not because the DNC conspired against Bernie etc. As Hanover loves to point out, America is a conservative country on the whole. There were certain states where Bernie just had no chance and that was enough to tank him.

Registered American voters only, please. — Relativist

Fair enough. If I were one, I would vote for whoever the Green Party nominate. You need the option "other" in there.

That parade was organized by the city authorities. I'm asking if it had been privately organized, how would have that made a difference? One way or the other, the local government had the power to either let it go ahead or stop it.

What? So, if the parade had been privately organized, the government shouldn't have stepped in and stopped it if they knew it would likely cause thousands of deaths?

I think any citizen who was concerned about his health, given sufficient education, may avoid public gatherings without first being told to do so by some bureaucrat — NOS4A2

Yes, they may, but we've just established that in practice, they don't. And you've agreed the bureaucrats (government) would have been right to step in and shut down the parade in the example I gave. Again, your position is self-contradictory.

I’m not sure why a government would hold a parade during a pandemic of such proportions. I can only wonder how it might have been had they not done so — NOS4A2

It might have been that most of those people wouldn't have died. So, yes, the government should have stopped it because they, not the citizenry, are ultimately responsible for decisions regarding public health and safety. And the citizenry should be able to reasonably presume if events such as this are given the go-ahead, they're relatively safe. In other words, the government are in a better position to combat pandemics because they have the power cut through confusion and misinformation and act decisively for the public good.

I would argue that the citizenry can do better to suppress the spread of the virus than a government. But given that entire generations since then have been raised in a cradle-to-the-grave environment, perhaps these days dependency on authority is stronger than self-reliance. — NOS4A2

So, your position doesn't seem coherent to me. It's part of a government's job to combat massive threats to public safety. Individuals are responsible for their own safety to a large degree obviously, but they can only enact this responsibility in the social and legal context the government creates for them. For example, if the government tells you you can stay home from work, your ability to protect yourself from a pandemic greatly increases. That is not dependency, that's a properly functioning society.

Which is depending on government to deal with a pandemic, no?

Yet you said earlier:

The profound dependence on governments to deal with pandemic is to me more frightening than the pandemic itself. — NOS4A2

But you simply cannot avoid the fact that coordination is absolutely crucial. — ssu

That's where government comes in. Look how bad Italy is now and imagine what it would be like if they hadn't been put on lockdown (even more so re China). The danger is of a whole health system collapsing. Not just for Covid sufferers, but for everyone. And panic, looting, and so on. The infection curve is exponential and if you don't catch that quick enough with coordinated and enforced government action, you could end up with social collapse. That's not hyperbole. It's a real possibility and sacrificing a few freedoms in the short term is a small price to pay to prevent it becoming a reality.